Page 1 of Gulp....In Disk Management I`ve `Marked Partition as Active` on 2 slave drives..now NTLDR is missing

In Disk Management (XP) I marked my 2 slave drives as active a couple of days ago.. Realising what I`d done I googled around to make sure it would boot up OK and all seemed to be saying it would be fine - C drive was still the system drive. Forgot about it until this morning - only turned PC off last night...
Now, with the other 2 drives connected (physical drives - not just partitions), the PC won`t boot up - the infamous NTLDR is missing. I`m assuming this is because it`s now trying to boot off a non-system disc - even though I didn`t (and don`t think you can..) change the System disc..
Can`t see there`s a way of reversing the "Set as active" option either.
Of the other 2 drives, one is a slave on the same IDE channel as main drive and other is attached to a PCI card.
Now, I`ve:
disconnected other drives and PC boots up.

I`ve played with the boot order and the PC has booted up with the other (D) drive connected to the same IDE channel but it`s not even seen in Windows now.. am going to switch boot order back because I shouldn`t have to mess with that - it was fine beforehand..
It`s like I`ve now got boot sector on the other drives that the PC is trying to boot off. :/

Boot.inin file seems OK - not changed for a while..
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Any ideas on how to get my drives back..(may be a while before I`m back....)

Ste

This item was edited on Sunday, 29th July 2007, 12:22

I think, if you boot with all hard drives in, but with your XP CD in the drive, you can go into the recovery console and fix your MBR, that may fix it.

fixmbr is the command

I broke mine a while ago when playing with Linuxs on my 2k PC

hth

Al

This item was edited on Sunday, 29th July 2007, 12:42

:/ rebooting with disc in.... loads setup files etc..... just about to go to windows (well, R options etc..) and I get a BSOD.. :(
Anyway, think I`ve sorted it.. didn`t think marking the drives as active should do anything as they don`t have an OS on. As I said, disconnecting them and it booted up fine. Checked my boot order and it was set to look at HDD-1 first. Must have been like this for a while. Not sure how to see what HDD-1 actually is - assumed it was slave on Primary channel. Switched first device to HDD-0 and it`s fine. Assume making a partition active adds something to the drive itself for XP to suddenly go no further than it and fail to boot whereas in the past I assume it looked at it, hung around for a bit and then carried on onto my normal boot drive. Although I say I assumed HDD-1 was the slave on Primary IDE, my PC used to hang for a while on boot while it `verified dmi pool`.. I thought that was the drive attached via PCI? Anyway, now it doesn`t hang there now either but I suppose my boot order is important now.....get it wrong and it will fail....
Any idea what marking partitions/drives as active actually does - and can I `unmark`/reset it?
Gonna do a chkdsk /f now anyway...

Ste

This item was edited on Sunday, 29th July 2007, 17:18

I had an external USB drive that I marked as active (just to see what it done.) The only thing that I could see that it done was reserve that drive letter. Before I marked it as active if I switched the drive on it would become E (the next available letter) or pluged in a memory stick with the USB drive off that would become E. After I marked it as active I pluged in my memory stick with the USB drive off and it became F where it would normally become E.

I don`t think you can reset it. (I tried.)

I`d get hold of a copy of partition magic if I were you. the only way to access your slave drives would be to get an adaptor/enclosure and attach them to the USB sockets you have. You should then be able to remove the active marker from the drives.

The only other way would be a boot code edit with something like norton diskedit but this sort of job is really for pros.... :o

Microsoft`s advice here...


Just craptacular....